The present invention relates generally to the field of booting servers, and more particularly to choosing the boot-up path with the most computing capability in a multi-node server.
Generally, a server system can include compute drawers, service drawers, and input/output (TO) drawers, along with external power supplies and network routers. The service processors within the service drawers are responsible for making sure the components of a compute drawer are appropriately initialized and booted, so that the compute drawer's computing capability can be utilized by the server system. For a compute drawer to boot, the following key components need to be present in its appropriate physical positions: processor (P), service processor (SP), NOR Flash (PNOR), and Fru Support Interface (FSI). In a redundant service processor system, two service processors work in master or slave mode, where the master service processor will initialize and boot to manage the system while the slave service processor will be on standby. If the master service processor fails, the slave service processor will take over and initialize, boot, and manage the system.